Updates 'n' stuff
So, I've written most of the script to my Top 20 Worst Theme songs, and it's going to be... a big one, possibly the largest video that I've ever made. To put this in perspective - when I write down a script, it's roughly 1 page equals 4 minutes of screentime. This script is 14 pages... that's a lot of... stuff. If you're wondering, this time around I am including anime dubs, provided they aired in the United States. I'm judging songs based on their lyrics, their singing, and their music. I also realized that I passed my Shark Tale goal on Patreon. So... that's what I'll spend next month doing, making a Shark Tale review. As for the Arthur review, I'm hoping that it gets finished within a week's time. Also, Loud House is getting better. Current episode in the runnings for admirable is Undie Pressure, which... considering the episode's premise is surprising for me to choose, but seriously - it's the best episode so far. I mean, before that episode in particular I really did not like Lola. She had - and still does have - plenty of potential to become the next DW - the spoiled younger sibling who gets the main character in trouble and gets whatever they want. That character is really fucking annoying. But that particular episode really makes her character shine. And it has a nice ending. One of the biggest flaws of the earlier episodes is that even after Lincoln "won" at the end of the episode some twist of fate would happen that changed that victory to a defeat. Whenever that happens, it makes the plot feel kind of... pointless. And I'm glad that's being toned down as the series is going on. ---- The Growing Around novelization is going pretty well. I'm at 6,000 words (although NaNoWriMo people would probably kill me for saying that that's progress over the course of like two weeks). For a general frame of reference, the first Harry Potter novel was about 77,000 words. Technically to be considered a novel of any kind, it needs to have 40,000 words. But technically a film only needs 40 minutes to be considered a feature film. Most people consider a novel to at least have 50,000 words... so, I'm technically 10% done with it... the first draft at least, also known as "the fun part." So... I guess I never went into "what kind of novel" it really is, besides a children's or a Young Adult novel. There were three options available to me. Number 1 was the Goosebumps option, where I'd make each episode its own miniature novel and have each entry be around 10,000 words. The second option is to make it like the Wayside ''series of books, where each episode gets condensed into a chapter, and there's an overall arc, with the novel itself clocking in at around 30,000 words. Of the 6,000 words I've written, about 5,000 came from transcribing one script - so using the Wayside route would be gimping the book and using the Goosebumps route would stretch things out a little too much. The other option is... well, the Harry Potter route... use the entire arc as one continuous story. So, the goal is to hit at least 50,000 words. I'm a little saddened that this means that I'll have to cut out certain episodes like ''Mind Games that don't really have anything to do with anything, but what can you really do? No route is absolutely perfect. And it's not like I can't write more than one novel. And if I really wanted to, I could easily expand certain episodes like Opposite Day into their own novels. Also, not everything that's in the novel comes from an episode. I am going off-script plenty of times, and the advantages of the medium are definitely helping things along. A lot of the decisions were pretty difficult in determining which way I wanted this to go. You see, the typical formula for this kind of children's novel is to have the main character come from our reality and go through magic to the fantastical. You see this in everything from Alice in Wonderland to Narnia - it's the standard formula, for a variety of reasons that would bog down this post too much to get into. But in basics - it allows our main character to be an anchor - we get to learn more about Hogwarts because Harry Potter has never been there, and it's also a crucial step in "the hero's journey" (crossing the threshold) which is the formula of most children's literature. However, the draft I'm writing now doesn't do that. It's not to be avante garde or anything - I'm doing what works best, and starting the characters in the Growing Around universe seems to play to its strengths. For one, in either draft, there's no way back to the... muggle/real world. "You can't leave Wonderland Alice. You have to stay here forever." I mean, I could see the advantages of both of these paths. For example, if I went down Alice in Wonderland route I could do something like having Talula be something like the typical spoiled rich girl in reality, and she'd be going against Sally in something like a school election. But when she got to the fantasy world, it'd be a real mayoral election with real stakes that have beaten down and changed Talula over the years. As for the advantages of the entire novel taking the "start in the Growing Around world" route, I think I'll keep them a secret since that is the route I am taking. ---- So... to internet news. It has not been a good week. So, here's some news of the Where's the Fair Use movement, during the copyright office's round-table discussion - www.techdirt.com/articles/2016… It honestly doesn't bode well. From what I can tell, reality is lining up with satire. Remember the Nostalgia Critic joke "But the chart says" yeah... apparently it's similar to reality. This is the chart they keep using: i.imgur.com/Z0lB6PX.jpg. Give me a second, I need to use my... statistics snipper. So, copyright people what I can infer from this chart is that you filing DMCA takedown notices is what's actively harming your business, and you want to file more. God that is one of the laziest, poorest created statistic that I have ever seen, no exaggeration. At least the other ones try to hide their falsehoods and seem to support what the statistics people are claiming on the face of it. I might actually have to get that documentary idea off of the ground. ---- Speaking of events that make me outraged and want to speak up. So, has anyone seen Cinemassacre's latest video? I did, and it seems that everyone else did because it seemed to cause Twitter to explode. What did James Rolfe do? He knew that people were going to ask him to review the newest Ghostbusters film, so he said ahead of time that he wasn't going to review it because he thought that it looked awful. These are the general facts of what happened. And, like anyone else criticizing the Ghostbusters trailer, it seems that everyone was trying to nail him to a post for this. He gave his reasoning why he didn't want to review it, and most of them were personal reasons, which is absolutely fine. I mean I made a top 11 list myself based on similar logic - Top 11 Things I'll never Review And you know, last week I found it hard to not be angry caused by any of this. Okay... let's try this. Where were you people three years ago when people said that Ms. Pac-Man was sexist for... giving us the same product but changing the sex of the main character, even though it's now sexist to deride doing that exact thing? Where were you people ten years ago when this happened before. Remember the Silent Hill ''film? Where they changed the main character from a male to a female - and people ''were harshly criticizing the film for that decision? (Long story short, because they changed the main character to a woman, there were no male characters in the film at all, and so they added an extended subplot with the main character's husband that broke immersion, added nothing to the plot, and slowed the movie to a crawl) James Rolfe's video was the most calm, laid back video that I've seen on this topic. He decided that he didn't want to see a movie, based on the movie's trailer. You know... like that's what you're supposed to do. And you've got terrible articles slandering him, you've probably seen the one from the Dailydot, which basically reads like an Encylopdia Dramatica article. It's funny that most of this is happening on Twitter, the website that has a Trust & Safety council that's supposed to cut down on harassment and bullying. Yeah... this is why censorship is bad. It's never used equally. A lot of people are saying that this is James being sexist, or the video is a backdoor way to being sexist... even though he only mentions gender once - to complain that people are calling this movie "the female Ghostbusters" because the movie wanted to use the same exact title as the original. It's all... very ironic to me. Growing up in the 80's and 90's and 2000's you'd come across a lot of cartoons, games, and etc that were aimed at girls. Things like G3 My Little Pony and Angelica Game Girl. People have told me that I shouldn't criticize G3 My Little Pony because it was aimed at young girls, and thus expected to suck. Do you know what the defense of the Ghostbusters 2016 trailer will lead to? It will lead to Hollywood thinking that they can make terrible movies, staring a main cast of women, and deflecting all criticism as sexism... leading to a movie-version of the Girl Show Ghetto, something you used to see in animation and video games. I'm serious, this could easily lead to something like that. Hollywood is a stupid animal that can only see what has happened in the immediate past. And female audiences deserve more and better than what was shown in the first Ghostbusters 2016 trailer. This reaction to James Rolfe deciding not to see a movie, more than anything else, has made me want to make a video just... I don't know... talking about this whole thing. Because apparently not acknowledging or talking about the film is sexist now. I dunno... do you guys think I should do that? I know that it's totally out of the norm of what I usually do, but this whole thing... this whole thing has just brought out the worst of the internet. And that's saying a lot. Like... a lot. Now, if you'll excuse me I've got to listen to Brock tell me about pirates one final time. Category:Miscellaneous